This invention relates to carriers for retaining integrated circuits during handling, transporting, testing and stocking in general and more particularly to an improved construction of such a carrier which permits assembling carriers for a wide range of components from basic identical elements.
Integrated circuits, particlarly those referred to as LSI(Large Scale Integration) and MSI (Medium Scale Integration) packages consist of a circuit in a flat configuration with a large number of leads. Typically, such packages may have between 14 and 64 leads. After manufacture such circuits must be handled, transported, tested and placed into stock. During such handling, testing, etc., it is necessary that the circuit and its leads be protected. For this purpose various types of circuit carriers have been developed. Typical of one such carrier is that disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,652,974. In the carrier disclosed therein as in other prior art carriers, only a limited range of tolerances for a given size component can be accepted. As a result separate tooling and production runs are required for each different size component. As a result, it has been the practice to manufacture a number of different sizes of carriers to handle components of established sizes. When a component is used for which no carrier exists, a new carrier must be created requiring new tooling and the resultant time delay to make a new production run of carriers or, alternatively, a different method of handling the part must be found. This has resulted in high cost and time delays or in the inability to handle or assemble the parts using automatic techniques.
In view of these problems the need for an adjustable integrated circuit carrier which can be adapted to different sizes of components and which will still adequately protect such components during handling, preferably permitting automatic handling and testing, is evident.